Moments after a 48–32 playoff loss to the No. 7 seed may not be the best time to bring it up, but I’ve developed quite a bit of sympathy over the years for Mike McCarthy—or, really, anyone who holds the job title of Dallas Cowboys head coach.
Look closely and you’ll realize it is not just the pressures of the market and the job, but it is the nebulous atmosphere created by owner Jerry Jones that makes performing well next to impossible. Jones has, to his credit, been patient with coaches. He allowed Jason Garrett a three-year runway of 8–8 records before Garrett even made the playoffs. Garrett was there for nine seasons and never made it past the divisional round. And now, everyone is assuming that McCarthy, who has posted three straight 12–5 seasons, will receive COBRA paperwork before the Packers’ plane makes it back to Green Bay. Firing McCarthy would be ridiculous, but take a look around.
Is it unfair for an owner to wear the burden of what we believe he might do, or what we somehow believe he is thinking based on our collage of bemused faces in screenshots of a luxury box? In most cases I would say yes. In this particular case, I would say that there needs to be a kind of active shift on Jones’s part that can, in turn, tone down the rhetoric outside the building.
